


Nor Hell A Fury

by alethiometry



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Horror, Post-Canon, Season/Series 04 Spoilers, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 06:19:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14909981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alethiometry/pseuds/alethiometry
Summary: Woodes Rogers has a companion in his cell.Major season 4/finale spoilers.





	Nor Hell A Fury

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “The Mourning Bride” by William Congreve.
> 
> Thank you to [Askance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance) for looking this over!

She can’t get the taste of ash out of her mouth. When she tries hard enough she can still feel a ghost of the flames as they consumed the Barlow woman’s home, the faintest flicker of heat to drive away her cold. Can still smell a whiff of the sweat trickling down Flint’s forehead as he held her, comforted her, lied to her.

Mostly, all she feels is cold—and rage—and hate.

She hears the prison guards whisper sometimes, their voices echoing hollowly down the cold stone corridor:  _ Woodes Rogers barely eats. Woodes Rogers does not sleep. _

His cell is cold and damp, far more spartan than the one he’d pulled her out of, what seems like a century ago. She hates it here. He hates it even more. So, she stays.

And Woodes Rogers barely eats. Woodes Rogers does not sleep.

_ They called me the queen of thieves once, _ she whispers in his ear, watching the goosebumps raise on his skin where her breath would have fallen, had she still the capacity to draw it.  _ It was meant to insult, to mock and deride, but at least they knew me for who I was: a queen. _

_ Now look what I've become. What you've made me become. _

He doesn't look—doesn't see her at all. And she knows now that he never has.

She wants to claw at him, to scream and shriek and rake her cold, blue fingers down his face. Wants to feel his flesh tear beneath her fingernails, like knives through paper. Another scar, to match the one he already has. She screams in his face when he sleeps, so loudly she feels her jaw begin to crack, her throat begin to tear, and he hears hardly a whisper of it.

_ I have lived in fear of Spain since I was nine years old, _ she tells him.  _ They came and they burned Nassau to the ground. My Nassau. My birthright. My home. And then they murdered my mother before my very eyes. You knew this, and yet you brought them back to do the same to me. _

She makes to grab him by his threadbare shirt, sweat-stained and hanging limply from drawn and bony shoulders, and feels her hand pass through his chest. He shudders and gasps and whimpers, pulse rattling through her gnarled fingers. She clenches them in a fist around and through his heart, and grins when he sobs in fright.

_ You let me trust you, let me mutilate myself to suit your every need. I bared myself to you in ways I'd never dared with any man or woman before you. _

_ How did you do it? _ she shrieks.  _ How did you make me make myself like this? _

They give him only a pallet to sleep on and a thin, scratchy blanket to keep warm. So different from the featherbed he'd grown used to. They'd grown used to. It was hers first, after all.

Presently she begins to lie there with him like she’d done so many times before, only now she’s but a shadow of what she once was, and he tosses and turns from the visions she conjures into his mind. He can almost see her then, she thinks, a blue and broken and twisted thing, blood streaked down her front from the still-open gash in her belly that will never heal.

_ We could have had it all, _ she hisses as he struggles beneath her, unable to move save for his eyes wild in the moonlight filtering through the narrow window of the cell.  _ We could have ruled Nassau side by side, as equals. They would have written stories of us, Guthrie and Rogers, Rogers and Guthrie. A partnership for the annals of history—the two who brought civilization back to Nassau. She was mine before she was ever yours. _

_ You made me like this, _ she spits.  _ You made me into a pathetic thing. _ She traces a cold finger down his scar, kisses him there with her blue, cracked lips.

_ Which of us is pathetic now? _

The guards don't like coming in here. They draw lots every day to see who has the great misfortune of bringing Woodes Rogers his food. His cell is damp and cold, though it reeks of fire. He hardly ever leaves the back left corner where he cowers, shoulders hunched, eyes restless, looking for ghosts.

_ Did you bury me? _ she asks.  _ Was there enough unrazed ground, when the Spanish were through sacking my island, for you to bury me there? Or am I lying at the bottom of Nassau Bay even now, consigned to an eternity among the bodies of pirates I once employed, then put to death? _

_ Is Charles down there as well? _

_ Funny, isn’t it, how he and I seem to come back to one another, time and again, even in death? _

He tears into his own forearms one bleak winter day, teeth gnashing at tendon and vein, and the blood streams out in bursts to the rhythm of his pulse, dripping thickly to the ground where she tries to lap it up. She can smell it, just barely, can almost feel it hot and sticky on her fingers. So red. So alive. So much more vibrant than her own, rust-colored and splattered down her front—and that, too, was something he had taken from her.

_ You'll die in here, _ she murmurs, her filthy hands stroking through his hair as the guards bandage his shredded arms. His eyes flutter and he moans in misery, tries and fails to beat them back with limp and languid hands.  _ Perhaps not in the way you intended today, but you will. One day. I died fighting for my life and our child’s life but you'll die here. You'll die in debtors’ prison, and the only stories they tell of you will be about your fall from grace. Everything you've ever accomplished in your life will be but a preface in the cautionary tale of the tragedy of Woodes Rogers. You'll die cold and friendless and they'll throw you in a pauper’s grave. _

_ But I will be here. I will sit with you when your time comes, and watch your breath fade through cracked and bleeding lips. I am your wife, after all. I remain devoted to you even now. That was what you wanted, wasn’t it, when you married me? My devotion, in exchange for yours. _

_ One of us, at least, should stay true to our vows. I will do this for you. Look at all you’ve done for me. _

Sometimes, when the night guard makes his patrol to this side of the prison, he can hear what sounds like a baby mewling—a thin, pathetic cry echoing faintly down the hallway. When he comes closer to investigate, however, he finds that it is not baby at all, but rather someone—something—some poor, pathetic creature that he's never seen but always heard—poorly imitating its wails.  And he’ll smell smoke, and fire, and the taste of ash will manifest itself on his tongue. And then he’ll blink, and the fire will fade, and the cold will chill him to his bones.

And he’ll find the disgraced governor tossing and turning in his sleep. Eyes wide, white, unseeing. Hands like claws, raking at his sallow face. Mouth frozen in a constant scream. Calling for his wife—the second wife, the murdered wife—for his brother, for his unborn child.

No one comes.

But Woodes Rogers is not alone. He is never alone.


End file.
